In the Attic
by Stefan-sama
Summary: Searching among the seas of dust, he finds a familiar orange tiger.


**I just noticed how my stories tend to have paragraphs that get shorter as the thing drags on nowadays. That, and the stories themselves are getting shorter, too. I wonder about that. But on to this one itself, personally, I think I was overdoing the descriptive paragraphs. I was trying to set a different sort of tone, but I don't think my brain-to-type transferring worked too well. Maybe it didn't seem all that to you, but whatever. Oh, and it's minor, but, fun fact: I spent twenty minutes debating whether to refer to her as "Susie" or "Susan." I ended up flipping a coin. Whee.**

**In the Attic**

Both stairs and bones creaking as he ascended ever slowly, he coughed as his head poked through the rectangular opening of his attic, dust swirling about as it was unsettled for the first time in at least a decade. With a grunt, he hoisted himself up, panting at the effort. He paused for a moment as he sat and panted slightly- in his youth, he'd have bounded up the staircase with maximum speed and minimal effort. Sitting there, he lost track of time and his surroundings, but with a blink, he remembered who and where he was. He was none too pleased with this sudden pull back to reality, but there were things to be done that refused to do themselves, much to his annoyance.

As always, Susan was busy with something womanish or other, and with the kids long since moved out, it fell to him to do the dirty work. He shuffled his feet through the dark jungle of boxes, his eyes glancing over hastily scribbled names and misplaced packing tape. If memory served correctly, and it never did these days, the spare clocks were in their own separate box, and labeled as such. Only heaven knew why she would ever want or need the spares, but the need of "what" far outweighed the question of "why" in this particular case, as in most cases involving spouses.

At last, he located his objective, and proceeded to reach up as far as he could (which, admittedly, was not very much) and take down the clock box. "Hey, that rhymes," he chuckled silently to himself as he slit the opening apart, but a quick adjustment of his glasses following a brief moment of confusion revealed that he had instead opening the box labeled as containing old socks. Annoyed even further and in a rush to leave the attic due to all the dust, he hastily stuffed the box back together and on top of its original stack and continued looking about for the box he needed.

Again, he located a box with the word 'clocks' written across its side, and a quick shake of the thing informed him that the package indeed contained what it claimed to. He bent over to pick it up by its sides, the easier to take it down the stairs again. Alas, to his utmost chagrin, in the process of doing such, he knocked another neighboring box on its side. Grumbling, he relegated his goal to a lower priority and set the second up straight. As he was doing that, a closer look past the black print spelling out 'Christmas ornaments' showed that in the corner of that same box was written 'Transmogrifier' in a child's hurried scrawl.

A rare smile crept across his face as he picked the box up again, this time with more than a little additional reverence. He leaned back and closed his eyes, remembering all those years he'd spent way back when, six years old, spending hours upon hours joyfully horsing around in general with his companion Hob-

"Hobbes!" he exclaimed in spite of himself, dropping the box he held as he did so out of pure realization.

All was silent for a moment. Then, after that, "Ow…" came the muffled moan from the package at his feet. He gaped, suddenly forgetting his age nearly exceeded his intelligence quotient. Suddenly, he was six, with spiky blonde hair, a red shirt, and a tiger for a best friend. He knelt and tore apart the box.

He reached in and held up a ruffled mass of smelly fur, colored almost straight yellow with years upon years of lying forgotten. One of the ears was bent backwards. A paw was missing its pads. The stripes running down its sides were faded and worn, half of them disappeared. Worst of all, the tiger was now roughly half his height when once his friend had stood towering over him.

They smiled at each other and laughed as they embraced.


End file.
